“I know you haven’t, Margaret,” he said. “Only—well, there’s going to be talk.”
She felt emptied out, hollow, her knees were weak. His words had almost knocked her over. If he said it, it must be so, even though she did not yet understand what it was he had said. She only knew that she was in the book, and that Harley didn’t like it; and his opinion stood for something, for a great deal, in her own eyes and in the eyes of the whole town. He represented what her mind called, somewhat vaguely, “the high-brow element”. He had always been “a fine man”. He stood for truth, for culture, for learning, and for high integrity. So she looked at him with her bewildered face and stricken eyes, and, just as a young soldier, with his entrails shot out in his hands, speaks to the commander of his life, saying in his deadly fear and peril: “Is it bad, General? Do you think it’s bad?”—so now she said hoarsely to the editor, hanging on his words:
“Harley, do you think it’s bad?”
He looked away again into blue vacancy and puffed gravely on his pipe before he answered:
“It’s pretty bad, Margaret…But don’t worry. We’ll see what happens.”
Then he was gone, leaving her alone there, bleakly staring at the pavement of the small, familiar street. Unseen motes of the familiar life swept round her, the pale light of the sun fell on her, and she remained there staring with gaunt face. How much time went by she did not know, but all at once----
“0 Margaret!”
At the lush voice, sugared with the honey of its owner’s sweetness, she turned, blindly smiling, and stiffly blurted out a word of greeting.
“Aren’t you just so proud of him? He always liked you better than anybody else! Aren’t you simply thrilled to death?” The voice rose to a honeyed lilt, and in the pale light the face was now shaped into the doelike contours of a china doll. “I’ll declayah! I’m so thrilled! I know you must be walkin’ on ayah! Why, I just cain’t wait! I’m just dyin’ to read it! I know that you’re the proudest thing that evah lived!”
Margaret stammered out something through stiff, smiling lips, and then was left alone again, her big gaunt face strained into vacancy. She went about the business that had brought her to town. She went through the motions automatically. And all the while she was thinking:
“So, he’s written about us! That’s what it is!” Her mind rushed furiously on through a chaos of unresolved emotions. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know what it’s all about, but there’s one thing certain—_my_ conscience is clear. If anyone thinks they’ve got anything on me, they’re very much mistaken…Now, if he wants to criticise me“—in her mind the word implied a derogatory appraisal of a person’s life and conduct—“why he can go right ahead. I’ve lived all my life in this town, and everybody knows—no matter what anybody says—that I’ve never done anything immoral.” By this word she meant solely and simply a deviation from the standards of sexual chastity. “Now I’m sure I don’t know what Harley meant by its being hard to take and people will talk, but I know I’ve got nothing to be ashamed about…”
Her mind was full of frantic questions. A hundred apprehensions, fears, and terrors swept through her. But through it all there were shafts of stubborn strength and loyalty:
“Whatever it’s about, I know there can’t be any harm in it. We’ve all done things we’re sorry for, but we’re not bad people, any of us. No one I know is really very bad. He couldn’t harm us if he wanted to. And,” she added, “he wouldn’t want to.”
To her brother, Randy, when he came home that night, she said:
“Well, we’re in for it!...I saw Harley McNabb on the street and he said the book is pretty bad…Now, I don’t know what he said about you—Ho! Ho! Ho!—but my conscience is clear!”
Randy followed her back to the kitchen and they talked about it long and earnestly while Margaret cooked supper. They were both puzzled and bewildered by what McNabb had said. Neither of them had yet read the book, so they searched their memories for all sorts of things that might be in it, but they couldn’t imagine what it was. Supper was late that night, and when Margaret brought it to the table it was burned.